Transcript of "Madoof regulations or lack of"

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International Review of Business Research Papers Vol. 5 No. 6 November 2009, Pp.63‐71 Before and After Bernie: Ponzi Regulation or Lack Thereof? Donald J. Furman and John S. DeJoy In 2008, one of the largest Ponzi schemes ever was uncovered, and the financial community has been reeling ever since. Bernard Madoff cheated investors out of more than 50 billion dollars, and investors are left to wonder how it happened, and how to prevent future schemes from occurring. In the early days after news of the scheme became public the media began playing a blame game, focusing in on the accounting profession, the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the investors themselves. This paper reviews the history of Ponzi schemes, the role of auditors in perpetrating these schemes, and the role of the SEC. In conclusion, this paper will suggest changes to regulation and procedure so that investor faith and confidence will be restored.Field of Research: Accounting1. IntroductionIn 2008, the financial community was turned upside down as one of the largest Ponzischemes ever was uncovered. Bernard Madoff cheated investors out of more than 50billion dollars, and investors are left to wonder how it happened and how to preventfuture schemes from occurring. Since the Madoff scheme became public, many otherschemes have come to light and the media has been playing a blame game ever since,focusing on the accounting profession, the Securities and Exchange Commission andthe investors themselves. This paper will review what a Ponzi scheme is, the history ofPonzi schemes, the role of auditors in perpetrating these schemes, and the role of theSEC. In conclusion, this paper will suggest changes to regulation and procedures sothat investor faith and confidence will be restored._____________Dr Donald J. Furman, School of Business, State University of New York at New Paltz,1 Hawk Drive New Paltz, NY, 12561, email: furmand@newpaltz.eduDr John S. DeJoy, College of Westchester, 325 Central Park Avenue, White Plains NY, 10606, email:jdejoy@cw.edu 63

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Furman & DeJoy 2. The History and Background of Ponzi SchemesLong before Bernie Madoff, men and women have defrauded the general public as wellas sophisticated investors with the use of Ponzi schemes. Some fraudsters had flashynames, such as William "520 percent" Miller and RaeJean "Rapmaster 20K Percent"Bonham. Others used sophisticated or official sounding titles such as "Foundation forNew Era Philanthropy" and "Mutual Benefits Company". What they had in common wasa dishonest attempt to defraud investors to fund their lavish lifestyles.Ponzi schemes work on the "rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul" principle, as money from newinvestors is used to pay off earlier investors until the whole scheme collapses.(SEC.gov). Ponzi schemes are distinguished from Pyramid Schemes in that withPyramid Schemes: Participants attempt to make money solely by recruiting new participants into the program. The hallmark of these schemes is the promise of sky-high returns in a short period of time for doing nothing other than handing over your money and getting others to do the same (SEC.gov).In one sense, Pyramid schemes are more candid, in that they typically reveal to theinvestor the method of financial gain, which is to recruit new investors. Ponzi schemeson the other hand, delude investors into believing that their money is being invested inhigh yield vehicles, and that their gains are derived from gains on investments, and notthe recruitment of new investors. As the Securities and Exchange Commission pointsout, Pyramid schemes, of which Ponzi schemes are a subset, collapse under their ownweight and are unsustainable. Source: SEC.gov 64

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International Review of Business Research Papers Vol. 5 No. 6 November 2009, Pp.63‐71 The chart above demonstrates the fact that pyramid and Ponzi schemes are, by theirvery nature, unsustainable. The schemes need to recruit new members and new moneyinto the fraud. Those members must then recruit new members in order to sustain thefraud. There simply are not enough new members, or new money, available to sustainthe fraud in perpetuity. In fact, the growth in funds and/or members must be exponentialin order to sustain the fraud. As the chart above demonstrates, if each new memberneeds to recruit just six others to sustain the fraud, then by going a mere 11 levelsdeep, a Pyramid/Ponzi scheme would have to recruit a number of investors into thefraud that exceeds the entire population of the United States. This is unrealistic to saythe least. By level 13, the scam would need to recruit more people than exist on theplanet. Again, an obvious flaw in the sustainability of the Pyramid scheme. Whetherrecruiting new members (Pyramid) or new monies (Ponzi) the results are the same. Thefraud is simply not sustainable over the long term.3. Who was Charles Ponzi?Carlo "Charles" Ponzi was an Italian who, at the age of 21, emigrated to Boston in 1903.According to Clikeman (2009), Ponzi received a letter from a friend in Spain, whichcontained a postal reply coupon. Postal reply coupons were created by the UnitedPostal Union (UPU) which was established in 1874 to aide cooperation between postal-sector players (Universal Postal Union, 2001). Ponzi calculated that couponspurchased in Italy were worth six times as much in the US as a result of devaluation inItalian currency. Thus Ponzi planned to send money to his friends in Italy to purchasethe coupons and then he would redeem the coupons in the US for stamps. He wouldthen sell the stamps at a discount to businesses. Ponzi began advertising his plan,promising to pay a 50% return in 45 days and soon was collecting millions of dollars forhis scheme. The then-publisher of the Wall Street Journal calculated that in order forPonzi to be legitimate, he would need to be purchasing millions of dollars worth ofstamps. Yet, there were only 27,000 postal reply coupons in circulation (Clikeman,2009). Ponzis scheme collapsed when investors demanded their funds after word gotout. Ponzi spent the next several years in prison.While Ponzi lent his name to the scheme, he was not the originator of the idea to pay offold investors with new monies in a scheme to defraud. In fact, Charles Dickens wroteabout such a scheme in his 1857 book, "Little Dorrit". In 1899, William "520 percent"Miller promised investors a 10% return per week with a "sure pull" on Wall Street.Investigators brought down his Franklin Syndicate, and Miller admitted "that all of thepayouts came from other investors’ money, and none from actual profits (2008, Acentury of Ponzi schemes).In modern times, fraudsters have perpetrated Ponzi schemes across the globe. Ponzischemes have been reported in India, Russia, Portugal, South Africa, Jordan, Romania,Albania, Haiti, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Philippines, and in numerous states in the US. 65

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Furman & DeJoy 4. Regulation or Lack Thereof 4.1 The Security and Exchange CommissionThe Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was created in 1934 as a result ofCongressional hearings following the stock market crash of 1929 that led to the GreatDepression. The Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (whichcreated the SEC) were implemented to restore investor confidence by providingcomplete and honest disclosure as well as regulation regarding honest dealing.The Securities Act of 1933 (Truth in Securities Law) requires that investors receivefinancial and other information concerning securities for sale, and prohibits deceit,misrepresentations, and other fraud in the sale of securities. This information isdisseminated by way of security registration which allows the investor to make informeddecisions regarding their investments. It is important to note that the government doesnot make decisions on investments, nor does it guarantee the information disclosed tobe accurate (although the SEC requires it to be accurate). It is also important to notethat not all securities have to be registered; for instance, private offerings to a limitednumber of persons or institutions and offerings of limited size.The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 created the Securities and ExchangeCommission, which is empowered to register, regulate and oversee the securitiesindustry. This act also requires that companies with publicly traded securitiesperiodically report information.The Investment Company Act of 1940 oversees the organization of companies thatengage in investing, reinvesting, and trading of securities. The act requires thatcompanies disclose their financial information and investment policies to potentialinvestors when stock is initially sold, and periodically thereafter on a regular basis.Under the Investment Company Act of 1940, hedge funds are specifically exempt. Inother words, they are not required to provide investors with financial information andinvestment policies, nor are they required to do so periodically (Sec. 80a-6(A)(5)(iii)).The thought process, obviously flawed, is that the hedge fund can pursue moreaggressive proprietary investment policies to obtain higher returns for their clientswithout disclosureIn the original version of the Investment Adviser’s Act of 1940, all persons or firmsadvising 15 clients or more during the previous 12 month period were required toregister with the SEC. However, a client was defined in a manner that made itsomewhat easy to avoid registration, as any legal organization was counted as oneclient, regardless of the number of individual clients making up that organization. Thosethat are required to register under this act are subject to very specific rules regardinglimitations on fees, custody of funds, books and records requirements, ethical 66

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Furman & DeJoy standards, compliance standards, and are subject to SEC inspection and sanctions(Schubert, 2005).The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 created the Public Company Accounting OversightBoard (PCAOB) which requires accounting firms that audit publicly traded companies toregister with the board. The auditors of Madoff Securities did not audit publiccompanies, and therefore were not required to register. However, brokerage firms arerequired to be audited by PCAOB registered auditors, so it would seem that in Madoff’scase the rules were violated. Unfortunately, the SEC exempted private brokerage firmsfrom this regulation as a privately held firm most often has few investors that needaudited financial statements. Madoff’s broker-dealer unit did, in fact, have an annualaudit albeit a fraudulent one. The SEC extended this exemption several times, statingthat allowing such firms not to register was "consistent with the public interest and theprotection of investors" (Norris, 2009). In 2009, the PCAOB announced that accountingfirms must now register with the board if they are auditing broker-dealers; however, thePCAOB is only empowered to regulate public companies and their auditors. In otherwords, audits of non-public broker-dealers as other private company audits are still notsubject to regulation, regardless of whether or not the accounting firm is registered withthe PCAOB (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2002) .Within the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, there are twoprovisions that could have done a great deal to deter the Madoff Ponzi scheme, had itnot been for the exemption noted above. First, the requirement that corporationsdevelop codes of ethics for senior financial officers that include, among other things,enforcement mechanisms (Section 406) and second, the requirement that outsideauditors be rotated on a regular basis (Sections 203and 207) (Orin, 2007). 4.2 Auditors and the Accounting ProfessionTechnically, Madoff was not running a hedge fund; however, he was an investmentadvisor (broker) who was paid through commissions rather than fees and a cut of theprofits. Regardless, his massive scam will help deal a heavy blow to many hedge fundsand fund of funds, as well as to other professionals who steered powerful clients into hishands. Madoff encouraged the perception that he was running a hedge fund when, infact, he was directly depositing his investors funds and those of the feeder fundsdirectly to his bank account. He then used the bank account for investor redemptionsfrom his "fund" as well as for personal expenses (such as purchasing a yacht). There isno record of even a single trade having been made on behalf of his investors.Friehling & Horowitz is a three-person accounting firm that is operated out of a 550square foot office in Rockland County, New York (Bloomberg News, 2008). On March18, 2009 the SEC charged the firm "with committing securities fraud by falselyrepresenting that they had conducted legitimate audits, when in fact they had not"(SEC.gov). The SECs complaint alleges that Friehling & Horowitz aided Madoff in hisfraud by claiming that they had performed the audit in accordance with GenerallyAccepted Auditing Standards (GAAS), when they had not done so. The complaintfurther alleges that the firm represented the financial statements of Madoffs broker-dealer firm were prepared in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles 67

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Furman & DeJoy (GAAP) and that it had reviewed the firms internal controls and found no materialweaknesses. "The SECs complaint alleges that all of these statements were materiallyfalse because Friehling and Horowitz did not perform a meaningful audit of BernardMadoff Investment Securities (BMIS), and did not perform procedures to confirm thatthe securities BMIS purportedly held on behalf of its customers even existed"(SEC.gov). Thus, Madoffs auditors merely gave the appearance of having performedan audit.Auditors are required to be independent of the firms that they audit. Specifically, theAICPAs Code of Professional Conduct requires auditors to be "independent in theperformance of professional services" (AICPA, 2009b, Rule 101, Section 101.01).Further, the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct states: "Independence shall beconsidered to be impaired if...a member... had or was committed to acquire any direct ormaterial indirect financial interest in the client" (AICPA, 2009b, Rule 101, Section101.02, Interpretation of Rule 101).According to the Wall Street Journal, "the SEC ... alleged that Mr. Friehling and hisfamily had investment accounts at the Madoff firm worth more than $14 million, a"blatant" conflict of interest that violated auditing rules, according to the complaint. Heand his family withdrew at least $5.5 million since 2000, the SEC said" (Efrati, 2009).Clearly Mr. Friehling, if the allegations are true, was in gross violation of theIndependence standard.All firms that perform audits are required by the AICPA to be peer reviewed by otheraudit firms (AICPA, 2009a). At present, "Over 30,000 firms are enrolled in the AICPAPeer Review Program" and they are "required to have a review of its accounting andauditing practice at least once every three years" (AICPA, 2009a). Why didnt the peerreviewers of Friehling & Horowitz discover the shoddy or non-existent audit work?Friehling & Horowitz claimed in writing, for a period of 15 years, that it did not performaudits. According to the Wall Street Journal, " David Friehling, the firms only activeaccountant, was enrolled in a peer-review program at the American Institute of CertifiedPublic Accountants, but wasnt required to participate because he told the trade groupthat he didnt handle audits, according to the AICPA" (Dugan & Crawford, 2009). Thus,Madoffs auditor avoided the requirement that all firms that perform audits be peerreviewed, merely by claiming it did not perform audits.5. Why Didnt the SEC Discover the Fraud Sooner?For many years Madoffs investment advisory service was unknown to the SEC. Madoffhad not registered with the SEC as an investment advisor. Therefore, the SEC knewonly about his broker-dealer business. In fact, when the SEC conducted its bi-annualaudits of Madoffs broker-dealer firm, which was located on the 18th and 19th floors ofManhattans Lipstick building, it was completely unaware of the Ponzi scheme beingperpetrated from the 17th floor of that same building. Madoff was committing fraudliterally right under the noses of the SEC. Until December 2008, BMIS was a broker- 68

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Furman & DeJoy dealer registered with and regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission(SEC), five self-regulatory agencies (such as the US Financial IndustryRegulatory Authority, or FINRA) as well as ten US states and territories. In addition,from September 2006, BMIS was registered with the SEC as an investment adviser.Press reports indicate that in the last 16 years, the SEC and other regulators examinedBMIS on-site at least eight times. The SEC twice met face-to-face with Bernard Madoff.But despite extensive contact and regulation, officials failed to uncover BMIS’s $50billion fraud that Madoff revealed in mid-December 2008 and which now appears tostretch back over a decade (Schwartz & Katz, 2009).Further, when the SEC began investigating funds that acted as feeders to Madoff,Madoff initially claimed to have fewer than 15 clients. With fewer than 15 clients, Madoffdid not need to register with the SEC. Of course, Madoff was lying. He had many morethan 15 clients, but he required each client to sign a confidentiality agreement statingthey would not disclose that Madoff was investing money for them. During aninvestigation in 2006, the SEC discovered that Madoff had more than 15 clients. At thattime, the SEC required Madoff to register with the SEC, and closed its investigation.6. RecommendationsMadoffs audit firm was able to circumvent the AICPAs requirement that firms whichperform audits be reviewed by their peers, simply by falsely claiming that it did notperform any audits. A way such a fraud might be discovered is by requiring allinvestment advisors, broker-dealers, feeder funds, qualified purchasers, sophisticatedpurchasers, and accredited investors to submit the name of their audit firm, as well asthe name of the firm that audits their money managers in whom they invest to a nationaldatabase administered by the SEC. In the interest of transparency, access to thisdatabase would be available online to any investor. Further this database will bedesigned so that it automatically cross-checks the data for discrepanciesFor example, had this database existed, the name of Madoffs audit firm would havebeen required to be submitted to the database, by Madoff, by the audit firm itself, and byeach investor or potential investor in Madoff. In this example, even if Madoff and hisaudit firm did not submit the auditors name to the database, then one of the investorssurely would have. And, by having Madoffs auditors name submitted, a cross checkwould have been performed. This cross check with the AICPAs records would haverevealed that Madoffs audit firm was falsely claiming that it performed no audits.Firms that audit investment advisors and broker-dealers, whether their clients are publicor private, should undergo a more rigorous peer review process to ensure to areasonable level of satisfaction that the audit firm has the ability, expertise, competenceand resources to conduct audits of such complex entities. Rather than a voluntary peerreview process required by a professional organization, the peer review should berequired by the SEC and possibly administered by the SEC as well. 69

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Furman & DeJoy In 2006, the SEC finally discovered that Madoff did have more than 15 clients. At thattime, the SEC merely required Madoff to register with the SEC and all was forgiven. Todiscover such a fraud sooner, the authors recommend that investors (individuals andfeeder funds) who invest more than $250,000 with an investment advisor be required toreport the name of their investment advisor to the SEC. Again, a database would becreated and cross checked. If this requirement had been implemented, Madoff wouldhave been discovered to have had a large investment advisory business many yearsago. That business would have, presumably, been audited by the SEC, just as themarket maker business was.The authors recommend that the SEC establish a whistle blower program. Such aprogram will be designed to allow individuals who believe they have discovered fraud ina hedge fund or some type of a Ponzi scheme the freedom and anonymity to reporttheir suspicions without fear of reprisal. The whistle blower program would serve as avehicle through which to submit evidence of such fraud. The SEC will be required toreview and reply to every complainant.7. Conclusion and Future ResearchFuture research should further explore how the system was exploited in perpetrating,expanding, and continuing Madoff’s, and other Ponzi schemes. An evaluation of theSEC’s Securities Act of 1933, Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and InvestmentCompany Act of 1940 should be completed. Through this evaluation, suggestions canbe made about how changes to the current legislation can help to protect futureinvestors from becoming victims of future Ponzi schemes.In addition to reviewing current legislation and offering suggested changes to thatlegislation, future research could consider additional regulations to be implemented bythe SEC. These regulations would be put in place to safeguard future investorsconsidering investing in hedge funds.Future research should consider the SEC’s policy on how they deal with receiving tipson possible fraud. It should consider the current policy of the SEC on dealing with tips,how effective the process is in terms of action taken on the tips, and what percentage oftips are accurate. Suggestions should be offered on a formal policy for tips and whistle-blowers, including incentives for tipsters and whistle-blowers to take action without fearof reprisal. References2008. A century of Ponzi schemes. The New York Times, [Online] Available from: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/a-century-of-ponzi-schemes/ [Accessed 26th October 2009], 15 Dec.AICPA. 2009a. Questions and answers about the AICPA Peer Review Program. [Online] Available from: http://www.aicpa.org/download/practmon/qandaprp.pdf [Accessed 23rd October 2009] 70